The weather history thread

[ou48A]

The Youtube video on the link below talks about the 1955 F-5 Blackwell OK / Udall KS tornado.
This was a very deadly tornado.

In the video it discussed the presents of a very bright Saint Elmo's fire.
While I have personally seen a very small example of Saint Elmo's fire on one occasion I have never heard of it being associated with tornadoes.

Has anyone ever hear of or seen this before on with a tornado?
Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...le&app=desktop

[OKCisOK4me]

It was dry and hot, the temperature dropped,
Storms rolled in, the rain was a win.
The humidity built up, squeezed from a sponge into a cup,
Then the dewpoint dropped and the thermostat crept back up to hot.

^^weather history in Oklahoma.

With regard to St. Elmo's Fire and tornadoes, no, I haven't heard of that, but technology probably explained that away considering how far we've come along since 1955.

[ou48A]

This is how much snow it typically takes to cancel school in the US.



I love this map

[OKCisOK4me]

That is an awesome map! Gonna have to post that one to Facebook!

[ou48A]

So nobody knows anything about a relationship between Saint Elmo's fire and tornadoes?

[ljbab728]

There wasn't one tornado in this movie.

[woodyrr]

In the General Weather Discussion - April 2014 thread, Jim Kyle related his experience in the 1950s covering weather for "The Oklahoman". He mentioned the first operational tornado forecast issued at Tinker Field in 1948. The story is interesting reading. I shot this photo of a monument to Fawbush and Miller's tornado forecast at the airplane display at Tinker.



Here is a history of the event from NOAA.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - Outlook - Tornadoes - The Historic Forecast

[Jim Kyle]

In the General Weather Discussion - April 2014 thread, Jim Kyle related his experience in the 1950s covering weather for "The Oklahoman". He mentioned the first operational tornado forecast issued at Tinker Field in 1948. The story is interesting reading. I shot this photo of a monument to Fawbush and Miller's tornado forecast at the airplane display at Tinker.

Thanks for the post! And as suggested in that other thread, I'll add a few more of my memories of those 6-decades-past days here, which is a better place than the month's new thread.

Although I've lived in Oklahoma for most of my quite long life (I'm in my early 80s now), fortunately I've never actually seen a real tornado on the ground -- and I had never seen a funnel at all until the one that touched down in Lake Hefner in 1998, did huge damage at the Yacht Club there, then hopped up and down through Nichols Hills, unroofed the OKC Golf and Country Club where my highschool class was having its 50th reunion (which I didn't attend), took down WKY's tower, and finally injured a few folk at Frontier City. I was watching the storm cloud from my driveway, well to the west of the lake, and finally made out a small funnel circling around the cloud but still high in the air.

That was not, however, the closest I ever came to such a storm. During my first night at ROTC Summer Camp, Fort Sill, in 1951, a twister raked across the post taking out almost 100 observation planes at Post Field. Along with seven other cadets I was housed in a squad tent erected over a framework of 2x4s. One of the others, a Texas A&M student who was much more mature (having been a sergeant before coming back to school) than the rest of us, detected the signs of the storm before it got to us, and ordered us all to get off of our metal cots and under them.

He was just in time. We had a tumultuous few seconds of hail and high wind, as we braced ourselves against the legs of the metal frames to make sure they didn't fold and drop on us. Then it was quiet again and we rolled out from under -- to discover that the tent and all of our possessions were no longer present, and the 2x4 framework was shattered. The jagged end of a broken rafter had stabbed into my pillow, preventing it and my wallet stowed beneath it from flying away. The time was around 2 a.m.

We spent the rest of the night, drenched and cold, huddling in the concrete latrine (which had escaped all damage), and all the next day scrubbing mud out of a mess hall building that had escaped other damage, preparing it as our temporary living quarters while the post engineers repaired the tent city.

Our tent was the only one to be completely destroyed, and only a few others suffered significant damage. The funnel, like that I mentioned earlier, had hopped along, lifting and coming back down. As I recall only one person suffered significant injury -- a lieutenant from Missouri whose arm was broken when he was blown against a door.

Ever since, I've claimed that I was some 15 feet from the funnel -- that being the height of the tent's ridgepole.

More later, as things occur to me...

[PennyQuilts]

Loved that post, Jim.

[Bill Robertson]

Similar to Jim I have lived here all of my 55 years. I've never seen a tornado either. I've even tried but not real hard. I don't go chasing but if there's one near but not on a direct path toward me I stick around and try to catch sight.

The closest I've ever been was in probably 68, 69 or 70. I don't remember exactly. We lived about a half block north of NW36th two blocks east of May. A tornado hit Dub Richardson Ford at 36th and May, went south and flattened Taco bell then east across May and flattened the Carousel Restaurant. Then it bounced on down 36th street knocking down trees. We stood at our front door trying to see it even though we had a basement accessible from inside the house. The next morning I walked to school, about 10 blocks east on 36th, and had to go around downed trees.

[Jim Kyle]

The closest I've ever been was in probably 68, 69 or 70. I don't remember exactly. We lived about a half block north of NW36th two blocks east of May. A tornado hit Dub Richardson Ford at 36th and May, went south and flattened Taco bell then east across May and flattened the Carousel Restaurant. Then it bounced on down 36th street knocking down trees. We stood at our front door trying to see it even though we had a basement accessible from inside the house. The next morning I walked to school, about 10 blocks east on 36th, and had to go around downed trees.

I believe that one was in 1970; it came in from the southwest about midnight or a bit later, took the roof off of the north half of Windsor Lanes (NW 23 and Meridian), destroyed the Mobil station on the southwest corner of that intersection, continued east down the middle of NW 23 for about half a mile, then went back to the northeast but lifted off the ground until nearing May at about NW 36. It blew away Shotgun Sam from the pizza place and continued along what is now I44 as far as Western before finally dissipating.

At the time, I lived on NW 24 a couple of blocks east of May, and was still awake when the storm hit, having bowled in a late mixed league at Windsor. Some of the league members had left Windsor only minutes before the storm hit. I was listening to KTOK radio for storm details, and the announcer erroneously said the funnel was on the ground at NW 23 and May (actually it was at Meridian, not May, at that time). My wife and I roused our three sons, grabbed our cats, and ran next door to a neighbor who had a full basement! Next day, we toured the damaged area, and at Windsor saw an unbroken soda glass perched on top of a railing where a league member had left it the night before...

I44 had not yet been built from May to Western, but the right-of-way had been condemned and people moved out before this happened. The storm did the job of demolishing the houses that were still standing!

Your location was very close to Deep Fork; do you remember the big flood of the early 70s, that put NW 35 and Venice under several feet of muddy water? It was the last of many major flooding events along that stretch of the would-be river. At The Oklahoman, we always checked out the area around NW 43 and Alameda, any time it rained more than a tenth of an inch or so...

[woodyrr]

The control console to the WSR57 radar that was located at the National Weather Service forecast office at Will Rogers Airport in southwest Oklahoma City. At this point, in the late 1980s, it was about to be decommissioned as the WSR88D radars were coming on line. Normally, this room was kept quite dark so the radar operator could see the screen.

WSR 57 Radar by woodyrr, on FlickrWSR 57 RadarThe control console of the WSR57 radar that was located at the National Weather Service forecast office at Will Rogers Airport in southwest Oklahoma City. At this point, it was at the end of its service life as the WRS88D radars were coming on line

[PennyQuilts]

My husband, an commercial airline crash investigator, likes to tell the story of how he was sent out to Charlotte back in the nineties on that bad crash. They were looking into weather related causes. He happened to glance over the shoulder of the weather geeks looking at the radar and couldn't believe what they were looking at. This was back when he still lived in OKC and all three networks had Doppler. In that area, however, they were still looking at a bunch of clouds, for the most part. Moisture sensitive stuff. We are so fortunate to be on the cutting edge and it's been fun to grow up with it. When I was a teen you just didn't really know where the dangerous storms were and listening to the sirens was a first line of defense. That, obviously, was a pretty patchy warning system. If it was raining hard you often couldn't hear it even if it was going.

[Bill Robertson]

Your location was very close to Deep Fork; do you remember the big flood of the early 70s, that put NW 35 and Venice under several feet of muddy water? It was the last of many major flooding events along that stretch of the would-be river. At The Oklahoman, we always checked out the area around NW 43 and Alameda, any time it rained more than a tenth of an inch or so...

I do remember that flood. My parent's house is between 35th and 36th on Miller and backs up to the houses on Venice. The water made it to the yards of the houses we backed up to but didn't get to us.

[venture]

My husband, an commercial airline crash investigator, likes to tell the story of how he was sent out to Charlotte back in the nineties on that bad crash. They were looking into weather related causes.

USAir 1016.

This was the plane...

[PennyQuilts]

Indeed it is! About all that was left, sadly, was the tail. It slid into a car port and a lot of people managed to climb out. They found a door to the house, opened it and walked right through the house to safety. That was one wild ride.